Could a new breed of activist investor help change capitalism for the better?
Activist investors have a bad reputation in the sustainability world. And for good reason: research suggests that activist hedge funds target companies that rank highly on measures of social responsibility because they see an opportunity to refocus those companies on short-term shareholder value, make a quick profit and move on.
In doing so, they often actually destroy long-term value: on average, the market value of firms attacked by activist hedge funds rises in the first year by more than 7%, but by the fourth year it is…
The Bankers for NetZero initiative is making the built environment its first focus sector, working with the UK Green Building Council to foster collaboration across industry, finance and government. Here’s why and how to get involved.
How do you go from an economy in the depths of recession to one that delivers shared prosperity? The last time the UK (along with many other countries) faced a challenge on this scale was in 1945. Then, we rose to the challenge thanks to massive public and private investment in rebuilding our cities, homes and factories.
A regional regeneration partnership in Fife is a potential model for a bottom-up green recovery. Here’s why.
In this moment of crisis, everything is to play for. Will we choose to build back the same as before, setting ourselves up for bigger disasters in the future, as a result of our disregard for planetary boundaries and social equity? Or will we seize the opportunity to build back better and put our economies, communities and natural ecosystems on a path to regeneration?
It’s an easy choice in principle, but in order to choose the path to regeneration we need to collectively…
The pandemic has made further disruptive shocks — both positive and negative — more likely over the decade ahead.
Six months into the 2020s and the conventional wisdom is that we have already experienced the decade’s defining disruption. But what if the COVID-19 pandemic is just the first in a series of disruptions that will shape the decade — for better and worse?
Late last year, Volans began working with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) to analyse macrotrends and disruptions set to shape the 2020s. As part of this, we identified ten potential “wild card” disruptions, which…
As world leaders gather in Davos this week, we are hearing lots of chatter about stakeholder capitalism. But how serious is the talk — and what will it take to deliver meaningful change?
To mark its 50th anniversary, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has launched the ‘Davos 2020 Manifesto’, which argues that ‘a company serves not only its shareholders, but all its stakeholders — employees, customers, suppliers, local communities and society at large.’ The Business Roundtable — a club of almost 200 CEOs of big US companies — issued a similarly-worded statement last September. …
What ethical blindspots will future generations judge us for, in the way that we judge our forebears for condoning slavery? Today it seems almost incomprehensible that it was once considered normal for a person of one colour to be permitted to own a person of another colour. And yet, slavery persisted for centuries before that norm was overturned.
Our collective morality remains a work in progress. The #MeToo moment shows how rapidly society’s view of what behaviours are acceptable continues to evolve. …
‘Modern capitalism has the potential to lift us all to unprecedented prosperity, but it is morally bankrupt and on track for tragedy.’
Paul Collier, The Future of Capitalism (2018)
The biggest threat to capitalism today comes from within. The people doing most to destabilise the capitalist system are not anti-capitalist ideologues; they are the self-avowed capitalists who have distorted markets in ways that allow them to enrich themselves at the expense of society and of future generations. The undermining of social and natural capital has brought capitalism — human civilisation, even — to the brink of collapse.
Markets have become…
This blog is an adapted (and expanded) version of a talk I gave at the Global Goals Forum in Berlin on 10th October. It draws on findings from Volans’ ongoing Tomorrow’s Capitalism Inquiry.
Capitalism-as-usual isn’t working. It will not deliver on the lofty ambitions set out in the UN Sustainable Development Goals or the Paris Agreement — certainly not within the required timeframe.
More worryingly, sustainability-as-usual isn’t working either. That’s an uncomfortable message for those of us working within the field of corporate sustainability, but the evidence is increasingly difficult to ignore: greenhouse gas emissions continue to go up; species…
For someone who died more than a decade ago, Milton Friedman has been in the news a lot recently. The Business Roundtable, a collective of almost 200 CEOs of big US companies, is largely to blame.
Last month, the Roundtable issued a revised statement on the purpose of a corporation. The new statement says that corporations have a duty to serve the interests of all stakeholders: customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders. …
In little more than 100 pages, Marjorie Kelly and Ted Howard provide an excellent introduction to the theory and practice of democratising economic life.
A generation ago, the conventional wisdom was that capitalism and democracy went hand in hand. Free markets and free elections had proven themselves, beyond doubt, to be a better way to run the world than state-controlled economies ruled by autocratic governments.
That conventional wisdom may always have been based more on myth than fact. In her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein chronicled how, since the 1970s, neoliberalism — the ideology of free markets —…
Richard Roberts
Inquiry Lead @ Volans. Fascinated by the future of business, sustainability and politics.
